Half a dozen food products manufactured by Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd have failed the test of state government’s food safety department. The district food safety and standards department conducted a raid at Ramdev manufacturing unit, located in Haridwar, on August 16 and collected samples of many products.

The government department has charged Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd of “misbranding” and “misleading”. The food safety and standards department allege that many of the products like mustard oil and salt are manufactured outside Uttarakhand and the Patanjali Ayurveda merely does the marketing act, which is misbranding.

The government department has charged Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd of

District food safety officer Yogendra Pandey said, “There is no problem with the quality of the products, but many products are manufactured elsewhere and their marketing is done here. Like the salt is procured from Gujarat and mustard oil from Rajasthan and both are sold as Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd products.”

The department has fined yoga guru Rs 90 lakh for misbranding six products. The products include lychee honey, salt, mustard oil, gram floor, pineapple jam and juice. The tests were conducted at the state laboratory in Rudrapur, located in Udham Singh Nagar district.

The Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd has termed the move politically motivated and said similar yardstick should be adopted for multinational and other big companies operating in India.

Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd’s president SK Patra said, “Many companies get their products manufactured from different units. We adopt similar strategy. It is politically motivated. All the companies procure mustard oil from Rajasthan, we did the same and the department is raising objection to it.”

The Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd also charged the district food safety department of levelling false charges against their “lychee honey” due to lack of knowledge. “Honeybees collect nectar from lychee flower. Such honey has the flavour of the particular fruit, so we have named it lychee honey. The department claimed that as we are adding lychee flavour or essence so the product is not pure. Which is totally false and the department lacks basic knowledge,” Patra added.

The Patanjali Ayurveda Ltd has not received the detailed report of the test conducted on their samples so far. They are likely to take legal opinion and other steps after receiving the reports.